How civilized of them!
Actually, now that he mentioned it, Dansk looked as if he was sporting some of the ‘negotiations’. She’d noticed his lip and one eye looked slightly swollen, but she hadn’t associated the marks of a fist fight with the settling of a dispute until he suggested that he and Kole had ironed out the situation and come to an understanding.
Consuelo had been right, she realized. The fight
had
been over her--sort of. She supposed it was more a pecking order sort of thing. No one got to mess with Kole’s pussy until he’d plugged the old womb with his seed, because he’d been first at the trough.
So what the hell had happened to the ‘I’m worried about you having a baby elephant, baby’? Apparently hormones and the instinct for procreation were outweighing reason right now--because the Hirachi males were in season.
The Earth human females were going to be delighted to hear that! Here they’d been preening themselves at suddenly becoming the focus of so much desire, as if they’d awakened to discover they were all great beauties and sex goddesses, and it was nothing more than the fact that the great lugs were caught up in a mindless need to propagate their species! That was a dampening thought, to say the very least!
It was somewhat mollifying, she supposed, that they didn’t limit themselves strictly to procreation. Dansk had definitely been hinting at recreational sports.
She wasn’t sure she liked the idea that they were willing to share her. They wouldn’t be willing to if they actually cared about her, would they? Or was she still trying to fit a round peg in a square hole? They weren’t human. Everything she’d learned about them emphasized that there were as many differences between the two as there were similarities. Maybe they just weren’t as territorial--excluding breeding time--as the human male--and female if it came to that?
Come to think of it, why would they need to be? Territorial behavior was directly linked to spawning--a way to insure one’s line. Nobody thought of it that way anymore, but that was the origin of it anyway. It had worked out differently for the Hirachi species, and they seemed very comfortable with it.
Could her species accustom themselves to it, though? Or was it something else that was going to make life hard?
Pushing the thoughts aside, she settled Cory in his pen again, did her best to pacify him over being abandoned, and went back to work.
Chapter Twenty One
Bri had missed the opportunity to eat at the first meal, but as empty as she was, she still didn’t want the raw fish. She discovered she was going to get plenty of opportunity to accustom herself to the possibility, though.
The Sheloni obviously didn’t subscribe to the U.S. labor laws. When the women had lugged water up the beach and cleaned the preparation tables, they were ordered to start all over again. This time, somehow, she was shuffled to the end beheading and gutting the creatures. She had to fight nausea the first hour or so, but after a while her stomach seemed to settle. Then it was just revolting to hold the things down and lob off their heads.
She hadn’t realized how squeamish she was. It was mighty thoughtful of the fucking Sheloni to cure her--all of them--of that reluctance to butcher live things. It was going to make it so much easier for her to stomach murder--not that she felt like disposing of the Sheloni actually qualified as murder, intelligent species or not.
She pictured them as being something like intelligent spiders. It was just going to be messier and more disgusting to splatter them.
She didn’t know what it was about that idle, random thought of violence that triggered a deep memory. But as she stood quietly working like a good little slave, thinking about retribution, staring at nothing in particular, she remembered something she’d learned so long ago she hadn’t realized until that instant that she still remembered it.
Lying at their feet, if she wasn’t completely mistaken, was one of the first and most powerful of the weapons man had invented--the raw ingredients for gun powder. Disbelief followed in the wake of that epiphany, but as she jogged the errant memory and stirred it with the sights and smells she’d been unconsciously cataloguing since her arrival she realized she
was
on to something.
Struggling to tamp the rise of euphoria inside her with a good dose of caution, she glanced at the woman next to her. “Any science teachers in the group?”
The woman lifted a grimy hand, used the back of it to push her hair out of her eyes and studied Bri for a split second before turning to the woman on her other side. “Science teacher?”
The question traveled almost the length of the line and a ‘yes’ came back. Bri leaned over the table a little and looked down, trying to figure out which woman it was. Several of the women glanced at her. Shrugging inwardly, she focused on her task again. “Ask the teacher if she likes fireworks,” she murmured about an hour later.
That time, she leaned out and glanced down the table several times until the question stopped. The woman, who looked to be in her late twenties, looked completely puzzled for a moment. Finally, her frown cleared. She exchanged a brief look with Bri and then looked around them.
Bri held her breath, waiting, trying to pretend she was as tired and bored as before, but it was hard to ignore the excitement that had begun to thrum through her blood. After several moments, she glanced down the line again.
The woman nodded.
It took an effort to contain the jubilation that went through her. Gun powder!
Now all they had to do was figure out how they were going to gather the ingredients under the Sheloni’s watchful nose and refine them, and how to use it once they’d gathered enough to blow the bastards to hell!
It was as well she had excitement to sustain her for a time. She wasn’t certain she could have made it through the remainder of the day without something to buoy her, but even that waned after a while, drained away by the weariness of standing so long.
There was no privacy for anything, even relieving themselves, but the women set to erecting the shelters had duly noted the lack early on and had set up one shelter as far from everything else as possible. Crude as it was, they were glad to have it, but Bri was inclined to think this lack of consideration was going to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Nothing could more surely enrage a group of women to the point of considering violence more than the lack of privacy and a decent toilet!
When she was finally released for her rest period, she lined up with everyone else for the little bit of privacy the shelter afforded and then moved to the opposite end of the beach to clean up the best she could. She was sunburned from standing out in the sun all day. Every muscle in her body was sheer torment, and she’d passed beyond hunger, but she didn’t think she could sleep to save her soul with the stench of dead fish in her nostrils.
Cory had behaved remarkably well considering he was accustomed to having her undivided attention. Mostly, it was because the Hirachi males had made it a point to pass as close to his pen as possible whenever they could and entertain him for a moment or two, and the women, apparently feeling it was a reflection on them, had begun to do the same so that he was never completely alone more than a few minutes at the time. But he had done well even when he had been left to merely watch what was going on around him.
She was proud of him and at the same time sad that she hadn’t been able to spend any time with him. It made
her
feel deprived.
He was asleep when she finally made her way to the pen to collect him.
She had missed his whole day, hadn’t had the chance to change him or feed him or play with him, and now she was just glad he was asleep because she was so tired she didn’t have the energy to rock him to sleep. Guilt filled at her at the thought. She felt like a terrible mother wanting to put her own needs before his.
She’d already carefully gathered him up before she realized she had no idea where she would sleep. She’d been wandering aimlessly for several minutes when Kole found her. Too tired even to summon a spark of resentment for the fact that he seemed to expect her to accept him as a sleeping partner, she nevertheless eyed him a little doubtfully. Without a word, he dropped a hand to her shoulder and directed her to a shelter near one end.
It looked barely big enough for one Hirachi, but she was too tired to argue. Ignoring her half hearted objection, he took the baby from her so that she could climb inside. When she’d settled, he handed Cory to her and then climbed in himself while she carefully settled Cory, praying she could do it without waking him. Relieved when he merely burrowed into the loose sand beneath the thin sheet that covered the bottom, she fell back, closed her eyes, and lost consciousness.
She roused over and over during the night because the unfamiliarity of her sleeping arrangements, dimly aware of Kole’s warmth on one side and Cory on the other. A cool, almost constant wind blew off the water, chilling her as it brushed her sunburned skin, but she merely burrowed closer to Kole’s warmth, dragged the baby close to her chest, and drifted off again.
It seemed to her that she’d barely closed her eyes when she was wakened by the annoying mechanical buzz that summoned them. Groaning, she opened her eyes and found herself staring up at Kole.
It was odd that that seemed right somehow.
He brushed his hand lightly over her cheek. “Your skin is red.”
She sighed, closing her eyes, trying to summon the strength to move. “Sunburn,” she said dully. “I’ll be fried after a few days of this.”
“You did not eat either.”
Dragging in a deep breath, Bri sat up reluctantly. “I can’t eat cold, raw fish.”
He frowned, a look more irritated than thoughtful. “You’ll grow weak if you don’t eat. You have no … flesh. You have lost too much already.”
Bri gave him a look. “I have plenty of damned flesh, and it’s too damned early in the morning for insults!”
He caught her arm before she could wiggle out of the shelter with Cory. “You need to eat to live.”
Bri glared him. At this point she wasn’t even sure there was a lot of reason to worry about
not
living.
“For Cory.”
Her shoulders slumped. She dropped her gaze. Unfair! That was so damned unfair!
He tipped her face up again with an index finger, forcing her to look at him. “For me.”
Because he cared? Or because she was supposed to care what he wanted?
And yet, despite the irritation, as simple as those two little words were, they brought a lump to her throat. Defeated, she nodded, scooting out of the shelter before the guard bots could decide she’d dawdled long enough to deserve a jolt from the collar. He steadied her when she got to her feet and wavered. “Work at the end where they cut the fish. I will bring something for your skin.”
Bri stared after him as he strode quickly to where the men were assembling for work. She was supposed to
volunteer
for the head chopping? That was worse than the skinning!
Sighing, trying to decide whether she wanted something for the sunburns badly enough to be stuck hacking the heads off the fish, she hurried to feed Cory and get him situated before joining the women to set up the food line. The bots seemed to have been programmed to allow her some time for attending Cory’s needs, but she didn’t dare push it. As soon as she’d finished feeding him, she settled him in the ‘playpen’ that had been erected for him. Someone, one of the women, she thought, had erected a shelter above it the day before to protect him from the sun, but she saw that his skin looked a little pinkish, too. That clinched it. If Kole knew something that would protect the skin from the sun she had to have it.
The sun was already half way to its zenith before the first men returned with fish. As hungry as she knew the Hirachi must be, having to work so hard when they’d had nothing to eat before they left, Bri enjoyed a guilty pleasure in it, because they were allowed to rest once they’d readied the tables for the food preparation. She settled near Cory, her head propped on the edge of the stones used to form his pen, half drowsing while she watched him pull himself up and shuffle unsteadily around the small area, using his grip on the sides to help him to balance.
He was going to be running before long, trying to climb over the thing. She hoped they could get out from under the Sheloni before keeping up with him became a real problem.
Sighing tiredly when she saw the first of the Hirachi emerging from the sea, she got up and went to take her place. Kole was right, as irritated as she had been at him for pointing it out. She needed to keep up her strength. She was going to be useless if she could do nothing but drag herself to work and then into the pallet to sleep at night.
The other women didn’t look to be in any better shape than she was. As much as it relieved her to know she wasn’t alone in being totally wiped out after the first day, that wasn’t a good thing.
True to his word, Kole was among the first to arrive, and he was carrying a dead thing that looked even creepier than the fish. He dropped it on the table before her. She stared down at it with revulsion.
“There is a bladder inside. Milk the fluids from it and rub it on your skin. It will block the rays from the sun.”
Struggling to uncurl her lip, Bri looked up at him. It wasn’t bad enough she had fish guts and blood all over her? She had to smear the disgusting stuff on herself?
His lips curled faintly, but he looked irritated, as well. “It is better than burning.”
To him, maybe. She wasn’t sure she agreed.
Wondering if it was his idea of a sick joke but uncomfortable about being impolite about the gift when he’d been so thoughtful, Bri reluctantly took the thing and hacked it open. The bladder he’d described was black--no missing it--the substance inside looked like cold cream. Something fatty to help her fry better? Shrugging inwardly, she decided to try it. She doubted she would burn worse and maybe it
would
help.
Squeezing the bladder, she quickly dabbed the disgusting mess on the areas that had already burned. To her surprise, the stuff felt like lotion, soothing and cool. A few moments after she’d applied it, she noticed an almost menthol like burning and then--nothing. Pleased when she realized that it at least had the property of numbing the burned areas, she looked around for Kole, but discovered he’d already vanished again.